The present invention relates to data processing by digital computer, and more particularly to application development.
In attempting to simplify the development of software applications, some companies have developed declarative programming platforms. Such platforms allow an application developer to develop an application by declaring what should be in the application and how the application should appear to the user, instead of writing software code in a particular language. The declarations can be specified using tools that, for example, represent available selections graphically and allow the developer to simply choose items to develop an application. Other techniques can also be used to specify declarations, but regardless of the technique that is used, the goal is that the developer should not produce an application by writing code in a particular programming language. Instead, a generator produces the actual code. The generator takes the developer's declarative data (e.g., metadata) and generates application code in specific output files that can be used in a particular runtime environment.